For
Release September 25, 2000
Contact:
Chris
Vander Rhodes
Malissa Williams
Object Management Group
Meta Data Coalition
+1-781-444 0404 ext. 115
+1-512-457 9400
chrisvr@omg.org
malissa@loomisgroup.com
Competing
Data Warehousing Standards to Merge in the OMG
September
25, 2000-- Needham, MA—Today, the Meta Data Coalition (MDC) and the Object
Management Group (OMG), two industry organizations with competing data warehousing
standards, jointly announced that the MDC will merge into the OMG. As a
result, the MDC will discontinue independent operations and work will
continue in the OMG to integrate the two standards. Until this week, there
were two major standards for metadata and modeling in the areas of data
warehousing and component-based development.
Data
warehousing is a response to the enterprise need to integrate valuable
data spread
across organizations from multiple sources. Analysis of an enterprise's accumulated
data not only allows sales and production to be tuned for maximum profitability,
but also allows entirely new and profitable products to be discovered and
exploited. However, it is difficult to merge data into a single warehouse
when its sources are spread over a number of different databases, using
different data models.
The
merger of MDC into the OMG marks an agreement of the major data
warehousing and
metadata vendors to converge on one standard, incorporating the best of
the MDC's
Open Information Model (OIM) with the best of the OMG's Common Warehouse Metamodel
(CWM™). When the work is complete, the resulting specification will be
issued
by the OMG as the next version of the CWM.
A single standard will allow users to exchange metadata between
different products from different vendors freely.
"The
merger of the Meta Data Coalition with the Object Management Group
represents a tremendous step forward for the software industry. Metadata
interchange is essential to the continued growth of e-business, as data
from increasingly diverse sources and applications needs to be exchanged
both within the enterprise, and more importantly, outside the enterprise.
One unified standard supported by both groups, whose members are among the
leading vendors in the industry, will go a long way towards facilitating
metadata interoperability between heterogeneous systems and
applications," said Mike Schiff, director of data warehousing
strategies, Current Analysis Inc.
A
Tale of Two Standards
Founded
in 1995, the Meta Data Coalition (MDC) is a not-for-profit consortium of
50 vendors and end-users, including BMC, Informatica, CA, NCR, Microsoft,
and SAS, whose goal is to provide a tactical solution for metadata
exchange. The Coalition
developed the MDC OIM (Open Information Model), a technology-neutral and
vendor-independent metadata standard that is comprised of the Meta Data
Interchange Specification (MDIS) and the OIM, originally submitted by
Microsoft. Since the MDC OIM 1.0 became available in July 1999, work has
been under way to align the standard with the CWM developed by OMG. On
August 31, MDC membership voted to formalize the decision to merge with
OMG.
"The
Coalition succeeded in generating broad participation in the development
of a specification in a timely manner, but our member vendors realized
that it would be necessary to merge our efforts with the OMG in order to
encourage industry-wide acceptance of a single standard. As a result, we
are happy to expedite this initiative and look forward to helping the OMG
establish the combined standard in the marketplace," said Kay Hammer,
co-chair of MDC and co-founder, president and CEO of Evolutionary
Technologies International (ETI), a charter member of MDC.
"The
merging of the two standards bodies is a positive event for customers and software
vendors - it unites two previously parallel standard efforts," said
Steve Murchie, group product manager, SQL Server at Microsoft Corporation.
"As the MDC OIM has been one of the design bases for the OMG
CWM, the united body will be able to drive the alignment even further.
We think this will go far in further accelerating the adoption of
business intelligence in the industry."
The
Object Management Group's Common Warehouse Metamodel builds on various
standards, including OMG's UML™ (Unified Modeling Language), XMI™ (XML
Metadata Interchange) and MOF™ (Meta Object Facility), and on the
Coalition's OIM. The CWM was
developed by a number of companies, including IBM, Oracle, Unisys,
Hyperion, Genesis, NCR, UBS, and Dimension EDI, and is an adopted OMG
standard.
"Coming
to a consensus on one metadata standard will have great impact on the ROI
of business intelligence systems and data warehouse implementations for
e-businesses," said Michael Howard, Oracle vice president of B2B
Integration and Data Warehouse Division.
"CWM, as the standard, has come one step closer to this
industry-wide consensus with the introduction of these new members to
OMG."
The
OMG brings vendors, users, system integrators and other interested parties
together to develop vendor-neutral, platform-neutral standards.
"The OMG is widely recognized as a place where software
standards are pursued and adopted," said Richard Soley, the OMG's
chairman and CEO. "Our
work spans software infrastructure for application servers and data
warehousing to standards for computer applications, and our standards are
being used in such diverse areas as air traffic control and Manufacturing
PDM enablers. MDC efforts in
the OMG will continue to further our work in enabling enterprises to share
information, regardless of what format it's in or what platform it's
on."
Consensus
through Cooperation
The
OMG, a vendor-neutral standards consortium best known for its work on
CORBA® and the UML, adopted its CWM in June 2000.
Even before OMG adopted the Common Warehouse Metamodel, technical
representatives from the Coalition and Object Management Group were
working together towards the goal of allowing the two standards to
interoperate. At the OMG's
meeting September 11-15 in Burlingame, CA, key member companies from both
standards groups began performing a "gap analysis" in order to
determine the best features from both standards and integrate them
together.
"The
emergence of a single metadata standard in one of the fastest growing
areas of e-Business — data warehousing and enterprise information
portals — is a crowning achievement for members of MDC and the OMG. The
two organizations have agreed to work through their differences for the
benefit of customers and vendors facing the daunting task of integrating,
analyzing and managing corporate information spread across the
Internet," said Sridhar Iyengar, Unisys Fellow and technical liaison
between the OMG and MDC.
"As
a long supporter of the OMG and a contributor to the OMG's Common
Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) standard, we're excited that there is now a
single data warehouse metadata standard," said Don Haderle, IBM
Fellow and vice president of Data Management and Architecture.
"Open standards provide our customers the freedom to choose
the best tools for their environment, and IBM is committed to supporting
important industry standards like the CWM. A single metadata standard
means customers and software developers can more effectively implement
open data
warehouse
solutions."
"Two
standards is one standard too many for data warehousing," said Sam
Greenblatt, senior vice president, Advanced Technology for Computer
Associates. "Computer
Associates has supported both organizations, and is delighted to see this
unification taking place."
To
get involved in the effort to integrate the CWM and the OIM, please send
e-mail to: cwm-interest@omg.org.
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About
The OMG
With
the support of its membership of software vendors, software developers and
end users, the OMG's CORBA is "The Middleware That's Everywhere™."
Since 1989, the OMG has been "Setting The Standards For
Distributed Computing™" through its mission to promote the theory
and practice of object technology for the development of distributed
computing systems. The goal
is to provide a common architectural framework for object-oriented
applications based on widely available interface specifications.
The OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA and has international
marketing offices around the world, along with US-based industry-specific
representatives. More
information on the OMG and CORBA is available at www.omg.org and
www.corba.org.
About
The Meta Data Coalition
The
Meta Data Coalition (MDC), founded in 1995, is a non-profit consortium of
approximately 50 vendors and end-users whose goal is to provide a tactical
solution for metadata exchange. Information about the Meta Data Coalition
is available through the MDC Web site at http://www.MDCinfo.com/.
Note
to editors: CORBA® is a registered trademarks of the Object Management
Group. OMG™, Object Management Group™, XMI™, MOF™, CWM™, UML™,
and Unified Modeling Language™ are trademarks of the Object Management
Group. All other products or
company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may
be trademarks of their respective owners.
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